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Why I Made This Website

I haven’t always wanted my own website. In fact, I was long convinced that creating my own website would be a waste of time and effort. This article documents the reasons why I took the jump.

Summary:

  1. I desire control over my digital presence.
  2. I want to learn about web development (AKA I like to make my life harder than necessary).
  3. I want to express myself.

But first, a prelude as to why I care about any of this digital stuff anyways:

The Internet’s Potential

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I cannot help but stand in awe of great machines.

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Regardless of their consequences or aesthetics, great machines move me in a way that little else does.

Whether they advance altruistic ideals or grind humanity out of the flesh, whether their branding is appealing or repulsive, whether built upon the passionate sweat of enthusiasts for the love of the craft or upon slave labor, whether they are used for “good” or for “evil,” I am drawn to these machines.

Part of this draw comes from my relationship with creation. Creating trinkets and realizing ideas is a major component of my sense of purpose. So, when I gaze upon the fruits of the effort and ingenuity that go into the creation of these machines, I clearly see the exact portion of creation that is in my hands -

approximately 0.

The realization that the whole of the fruits from my central passion of creation amounts to nothing in the grand scheme of things ultimately drives me to better understand these systems and their creators in order to, one day, have a meaningful portion of creation in my hands, even in a subjective sense.

Among the most personally impactful great machines stand:

  • the electrical grid
  • the global supply chain and of course,
  • the internet.

Yet, even among the greats the internet stands out as a different form of machine entirely. Where the grid is made of wood and steel, and global supply chains made of organized human efforts, the internet is an semi-organized amalgamation of silicon, intelligence, and emotion.

The systems of the internet and the masses that interact with them are nearly indistinguishable - discourse and consumption meld with algorithms and capital to create utterly new experience and forms of organization.

Interacting with this system is an utterly unique human experience. There is no comparison.

However, this does not mean the system is necessarily good for humanity. There is much to be said about problems that stem from the existence of the internet. However, I think that we are very lucky in the opposite regard - the origins of the internet have strong roots in a few incredible ideas which have the potential for massive upside.

The central idea that can help us understand the internet’s potential is freedom. The internet and digital tools offer immense freedom in the domains of communication and creation. This freedom goes both ways - there is power to take away freedom for others and to create freedom for yourself. Alongside this freedom are the ideas upon which the early internet and digital age stand.

The freedom offered by the internet can either serve to undermine these ideas, or to strengthen them.

However, there is an inherent contradiction in the freedom of the internet that must be addressed. In order to create freedom with the internet, one must have access to tools and interfaces that are not inherently abundant. Thus, access to freedom is restricted by the means by which freedom is created, creating a contradiction.

For example, one must have the basic technology needed to access the internet in the first place. Then, to create freedom in the form of a web app, one must have access to tools (either through development or purchasing) that allow them to create their web app.

At each step of freedom on the internet comes the need for a scarce tool.

This is the inherent contradiction in the freedom that the internet grants its users. This contradiction arises from the real-world restrictions on how we can use these tools.

This is where the originating ideas of the internet come in. These ideas help us understand how to deal with this contradiction in order to recover the greatest freedom within the situation we are in. Fortuntaley for us, these ideas are inherently built into the function of digital devices.

The nature of digital devices are the open and free sharing of information and tools.

This is what FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) is all about - software that is:

  1. Free: think free speech, not free beer
  2. Libre: licensed so that anyone can replicate and edit the software
  3. Open Source: the source code is available for everyone to see

FLOSSs (nice acronym, huh?) are key tools that maximize freedom for users of digital tools. Understanding why this is true is an essential keystone for understanding the importance of this website in my digital existence.

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The whole point of bothering with the internet is the freedom it offers - the sacrifice of this freedom in exchange for convenience through neglect of the FLOSS principles must be rejected.

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End prelude!

Social Media is Inadequate and Harmful

The most appealing argument against creating your own website is that simpler, snazzier tools exist that serve the same functionality as a website.

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The issue is that these tools are social media platforms.

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There are a number of issues with using social media platforms in general. The one that I want to focus on is the lack of control that you have as a user. This takes many forms:

  1. How your posts are used or shared.
  2. How your data is used and shared.
  3. What content is shared with you.
  4. What form your creative expression can take.
  5. What you are allowed to say.
  6. How you can interact and engage with others.
  7. Who can see your posts.

… etc

Each of these points deserve their own paragraph, but I’ll spare the details (for now). The point is that the social media experience fundamentally restricts how you exist on the internet. It also extracts your work and attention for profit through advertising and AI training.

I don’t want that, so I won’t use these tools.

A Word on Learning and Difficulty - or - Gee Whizz, What’s This Web Dev Thing About?

Learning is a key aspect of my identity and purpose. I find the process of interpretation and fitting disconnected nuggets of information into a larger picture one of the most satisfying activities one can possibly engage in.

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That is to say, learning is intrinsically valuable.

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I believe everyone can relate to this on some level. I honestly find learning too gratifying to believe that learning is not a universal good. However, I find myself mired in anti-intellectual sentiment nearly everywhere I go - even in academia. This is a contradiction, no? Well, I would say that the break in appetite b etween myself and others comes from the difficulty involved in the process.

Learning is also an instrinsically painful and difficult process.

Learning involves not only the creation of new bonds in the mind, but also the destruction of old bonds. It requires a taste for not only finding out where you’re right, but where you’re wrong as well. In fact, most learning takes place through the process of painfully ripping out the foundation of your knowledge and starting from scratch, seeing how it compares to what was there before, what others have, and then doing it all over again.

Learning is never done. You never accomplish learning. However, the process is absolutely wonderful.

This is why I am taking a pains to learn web development - not only because I am arrogant enough to believe that creating a website will be easy peasy and worth the time investment in order to have adequate control over my digital presence, but also because

it’s worth it.

Self-Expression Through the Internet

As I grow older, I realize that I have never given self-expression nearly enough credit. I have always been drawn to systems and machines - to the study of the external, the objective. However, through my study of the objective I have come to appreciate the subjective more and more for a simple reason.

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The subjective is more interesting, but only on a personal level.

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This is interesting because the objective is interesting to many people for the fact that the objective is inherent in the object itself. The subjective, on the other hand, is interesting insofar as it relates to the observer. That is, my “self,” in its purest form, is something that can only be interesting to me; however, once I translate aspects of my “self” into forms of self-expression, it instantly becomes interesting to everyone for the fact that they exist and are witnessing my self-expression.

I’ll admit - I still haven’t got it all worked out. But, I know that I ought to value my self-expression more, and that I have to share it. Therefore, I will leverage the freedom of the internet to express myself and share that expression with others.